BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
It is well known in the patented prior art to mount a plurality of terminal blocks on a common support rail, as evidenced by the to Horn, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,411,417, Eggert, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,588,881, and Eggert, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,629,831, among others, and the European patent No. EP 95 113 730 A1. The terminals carried by the terminal blocks serve various functions, said as bus bars for supplying electrical power to the terminal blocks, grounding connections to the grounded support rail, and signal terminals for supplying control signals to and from modules mounted on associated with the terminal blocks.
It has also been proposed in such terminal block assemblies to latch together successive pairs of the terminal blocks, thus improve the rigidity of the assembly and thereby prevent electrical separation of the components upon the application of impact or shock forces to the assembly. In the known latching devices, the use of a release tool inserted through an access opening is often required to disconnect the latch. One drawback to this arrangement is that at certain crowded regions of the terminal blocks, for example, the end portions that contain a large number of terminals, it is not possible to provide access openings for introducing a latch releasing tool.